A group of former TimeGate Studios staffers have reformed under a new label with a brand new game: Orb Interactive’s “.DECIMAL”, a sci-fi action real-time strategy/multiplayer online battle arena game.

It’s a mouthful, but Orb Interactive is promising “.DECIMAL” will be an innovative experience “with a visual style unlike anything you’ve seen in the genre.” There are no magic spells or imps in this game; everything is energy-this, energy-that, and pew pew kachoo all over the place.

As in traditional MOBA games, like “League of Legends” and “DOTA 2,” players are divided into two teams. From there, they must push through enemies and destroy the opposing side’s home base to win the game. As they fight, they gain experience and cash to level up or upgrade equipment.

There are some interesting twists. Players control squads instead of individual “hero” units. Your squad still functions like a single unit and can be equipped with your standard trinkets just like a traditional MOBA but – AHA! PLOT TWIST! Players can add a variety of units to their squad to fill out roles or bolster existing ones:

Do you need healing? Transform one of your squadmates into a field medic.
Are pesky stealth units giving you a hard time? Add a scout to your squad.

Of course, costs will vary depending on the unit. Towering mechs will cost more than your run-and-gun infantry unit, but will be that much more effective.

Seeing as Orb Interactive is made up of former TimeGate Studios staffers, it’s easy to see some of the influences from their earlier games. The visual style shares that same sleek veneer from the “Section 8” series and the squad mechanic is eerily similar to the old company feature from “Kohan”. Of course, none of those are bad things and they do add some eyebrow-raising twists to an already established genre.

Personally, it’s good to see these ex-TG staffers keeping busy in the gaming world. Following their collapse earlier in the year, I was afraid many of them would move out of state (and outside of my greedy news-gathering claws). Luckily for me, they didn’t all just up and leave.

I got in touch with Zachary Forcher, one of the owners of Orb Interactive, who said they began work on “.DECIMAL” a few months ago, sometime in May or June. He also gave me a background on some of the people at Orb:

“I’ll try to sum up the answer as we’ve all had many positions over our 14 years at the company. The owners of Orb Interactive are all former TimeGate Artist. Phillip Morales worked as Art Lead, Project Art Director, and Project Creative Director. I have done the same as well as being the Studio Art Director for nearly all of my time at TimeGate. Enrique Pina was also an Art Lead on multiple projects throughout his time at Timegate. The three of us cover many disciplines of art including modeling, texturing, animation, interface design, lighting and visual effects.”

Orb Interactive is trying to gather $500,000 for their game on Kickstarter, and they have until Sept. 27 to do it. The game will be a PC-only title.

I’m going to end it here, but I’ll be digging into Orb Interactive and their upcoming game later on. Check back to Houston Gamer and follow me on Twitter for more video game and geek news in Texas and beyond: @pererajh